Repeat Offender Project Targets High Rate Offenders The fundamental obligation of any government is to guarantee the safety of it’s citizens. Law enforcement, prosecution and courts should give paramount importance to that obligation. Studies both here and abroad have confirmed what law enforcement and criminologists have long suspected: that a small percentage of the criminal population is responsible for committing a large percentage of the crime. James Q. Wilson, a nationally recognized criminologist and professor of management and public policy at U.C.L.A., states that studies show that about 6% of the criminal population will commit half or more of the crime. Common sense dictates that imprisonment of these repeat offenders will reduce the amount of violent crime. Obviously, when these criminals are on the streets, they are preying on Lexington’s law-abiding citizens. When they are in prison, they are not committing crimes. Moreover, it makes great sense to target scarce law enforcement resources on the high-rate offender—the offender who not only commits a large number of crimes, but serious and violent crimes. Efforts to ensure imprisonment for repeat offenders are frequently criticized by opponents citing the cost. That one-sided analysis ignores the cost that law-abiding citizens pay when career criminals are allowed to remain on the streets preying on new innocent victims. A recent study concluded that for every dollar society spends to keep a prisoner locked up, it saves two dollars in other expenses to society. To ignore the costs of crime to the law-abiding citizens and consider only the price of the prison beds needed for incarcerating hardened repeat offenders is just plain wrong. Lexington's Repeat Offender Prosecution Enforcement (R.O.P.E.) Project targets those high-rate offenders. We in law enforcement and prosecution believe that the identification, prosecution and imprisonment of repeat offenders for long periods of time is clearly an effective and efficient way to reduce crime in our community. The law-abiding citizens of Lexington deserve no less. |
It’s Time To Get The Repeat Offenders Off Our Streets
